A wonderful idea if a bit of an exaggeration, the disc billed as Shostakovich: The Two Viola Sonatas, Opus 40 and 147, and Viola Suite from The Gadfly, Opus 97a, is almost but not quite a success. It's a wonderful idea because all three of Shostakovich's chamber works for viola have never been joined together on the same disc. It's a bit of an exaggeration because Shostakovich only actually wrote one chamber work for viola -- the Opus 147 Sonata. The other two works are transcriptions made with the composer's approval, one ...
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A wonderful idea if a bit of an exaggeration, the disc billed as Shostakovich: The Two Viola Sonatas, Opus 40 and 147, and Viola Suite from The Gadfly, Opus 97a, is almost but not quite a success. It's a wonderful idea because all three of Shostakovich's chamber works for viola have never been joined together on the same disc. It's a bit of an exaggeration because Shostakovich only actually wrote one chamber work for viola -- the Opus 147 Sonata. The other two works are transcriptions made with the composer's approval, one of the Cello Sonata, Op. 40, by the work's original dedicatee and the other of the Suite from The Gadfly, Op. 97a, by the violist of the Beethoven quartet. And it's almost but not quite a success because only the Opus 147 Sonata actually sounds appropriate played on the viola. As a viola sonata, the Opus 40 Sonata sounds weak and under-characterized, with the massive piano part too often obscuring the soloist, while as a viola suite The Gadfly score sounds trite and unremarkable,...
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